


Futures

by starrystarrytrouble



Category: Open Heart (Visual Novels)
Genre: Bakery and Coffee Shop, Baristas, Boss/Employee Relationship, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff, New York City, Recovered Memories, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:21:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27334102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrystarrytrouble/pseuds/starrystarrytrouble
Summary: What did Ethan do the night Edenbrook closed? Set after c19.Also explores the idea that Ethan and MC briefly met before OH started but didn't realise.
Relationships: Ethan Ramsey/Main Character (Open Heart)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	Futures

**11.30pm**

A warm voice rang out through the dark Edenbrook atrium, startling Ethan. 

“How’s the quiet?”

He looked over at Eve’s dark silhouette and starry eyes lighting up the pitch-black hospital. 

“Perfect.”

She smiled at him, the professional nostalgia of minutes earlier replaced by something wicked and hungry. 

“I know you said you’ll see me tomorrow but I’m going straight home now. If you want things to get a little…louder. You know where to find me.”

Before he could string the words together, she’d turned on her heel and walked out, the gentle dip of her hips enticing him with every step.

He wanted to join her, he felt his blood surge through every vein willing himself to follow, but logic prevented him. 

Since the rush of Edenbrook closing had kept them working at full pelt all he’d shared with Eve were illicit encounters. Urgent moments in their apartments, and despite his best intentions, at the hospital. Skin moving against skin desperately in between the little sleep the mission allowed.

He didn’t want to let her go but nor was there time for them. Full focus had to remain on the patients. 

Now the hospital was closed, he had all the time in the world to make things right with her. She’d already told him she was staying near Boston. The intention was implicit. It was for him. He hadn’t yet told her that he would’ve gone anywhere she asked him to. 

He would find out everything he didn’t already know about her. 

They’d do this properly. 

Starting tomorrow. 

He breathed in deeply, took a long last look around the hospital foyer and walked through the front doors without another glance back.

  
**12.00am**

It was midnight when he got home.

He poured scotch into a crystal glass and turned his attention to the box on his kitchen table. 

Full of odds and ends from his desk he didn’t have time to sort, he began to pull out things he’d long forgotten existed. Certificates, old thank you cards from patients, headed paper and old conference brochures. 

When he came across a Hersheys bar, he couldn’t help but smile. Ever since Eve joined the team, he kept candy in his drawer for when they were working late. 

He stared blankly at the chocolate. 

They really weren’t going to work together again. 

But he still had her. 

Despite everything. 

He brushed away the tightness in his chest and carried on sifting through the box. 

It was full of the past. A place he hated. Just like Providence.

But it hadn’t been all bad, he’d told Eve earlier when they drove his dad back.

Seeing Eve in Providence was ethereal. He didn’t know what it meant, to have someone so beautiful and bewitching standing in his musty front room, there because of him and so willing. He smiled to himself at the thought of what his teenage self would think of him now. 

But Providence was in the past. And now Edenbrook was too. 

He dumped a big pile of paper into the bin and slipped his hand into the box. A long lanyard with a square laminated ID clattered to the floor. 

He looked at his expressionless face looking back at him from 5 years ago. His blue eyes stared back at him. 

It was an ID badge from a conference he’d attended in New York in 2015. He and Naveen gave the keynote there and he didn’t usually keep things like this so he must have saved it for a reason. He looked at it again carefully.

His blood ran cold. 

Tiny shivers of panic flew through his veins. 

His breath slowed and for a second, he could swear his heart stopped.

And he froze.

The past was an island you visited for a break.

You weren’t supposed to live there. 

The memory of the conference came flooding back, and he realised why he’d kept the ID badge. 

Because he _wanted_ to remember it. 

He pressed his eyes closed and took himself deep into the memory.

  
Manhattan was beautiful. Crisp fall leaves littered the ground and he took in the expanse of the glittering Hudson river. New York was his favourite city after Boston. He ran a hand though his hair and basked in the warm fall sunshine.

His keynote was due in 2 hours and he was tired of the endless networking. Naveen was busy at a Panacea Labs breakfast and Ethan stole himself away from the huge conference centre.

He found a coffee shop on the corner. It looked independently owned, just like the café he frequented near Edenbrook.

He stepped inside and a warm voice greeted him before he’d even reached the counter.

“Let me guess… macchiato, double shot?”

Bright green eyes looked up at him from under dark lashes and thick brown waves tumbled over her shoulders. 

For a second, he couldn’t formulate a response. 

She’d guessed his order correctly and that was utterly unacceptable.

“Close. Triple.” 

“C’mon, you’re not a little impressed?” she grinned back at him. 

He couldn’t help but notice how pretty she was, so completely wide-eyed and enchanting that he was finding it hard to not stare at her. He tensed his jaw and he replied sternly.

“You’re a barista, it’s your job to read customers.”

“Actually not a barista,” she said with a shrug, that magical smile not leaving her eyes as she gazed up at him.

“I’m visiting my aunt, this place is hers. I’m just helping out,” she moved over to the coffee machine again.

However enchanting her smile was, her next words made her downright fascinating.

“I’m a med student.”

“At NYU Grossman?” He tried to keep his voice as flat as possible.

“Geffen at UCLA actually.”

He was impressed and it showed in the tiny curve of a smile that had appeared so involuntarily at his mouth.

“You’re a long way from home.”

“So are you. You don’t seem like a New Yorker,” she looked up from the side of the machine.

“I’m not. I’m at a conference at the Javits Center.”

As soon as the words left his lips, he questioned why he was suddenly telling her so much.

“So are you a doctor or a big pharma rep? Because if it’s the second one I don’t think we can speak.”

“What do you think?”

She stopped fiddling with the machine and looked him up and down appraisingly.

“I think it’s probably safe,” she smirked.

He couldn’t help but smile back. He tried to bring the conversation back onto safe ground.

“Have you decided what you want to specialise in?”

“I have an idea. Hey, why don’t you guess?”

She raised an eyebrow in a dare.

“Fine. You don’t strike me as a surgeon,” he said languidly.

“Not cold hearted enough?”

“You talk too much.”

Ripples of vibrant laughter surrounded him and he admired himself for having caused the sound. 

“I don’t see you in immunology either,” he continued.

“Any reason?”

“You’re not focused enough for research, you’ve just oversteamed the milk.”

She laughed again, the musical sound beckoning him further in.

“Okay, you got me.”

“You’d be bored in paeds.”

“Really?” she stared back at him, curious.

“I think you like a challenge.”

Her eyes stayed locked on his and he felt the tension between them electrify. 

She pushed his coffee towards him on the counter. 

“So what’s the final verdict then, doc?”

“I’ll let you know before I go,” he smirked. 

It was only after he left the counter and sat down at a bench that he realised this was the first time they’d broken eye contact since he walked in. 

The coffee was awful. He did his best to rifle through a medical journal but he still couldn’t stop looking over to her.

It was the way she kept biting the corner of her lip. 

The way her hair fluttered in front of her face and she tucked it out the way.

The way she kept looking over at him too. That their eyes kept meeting and he had to pull away first each time.

She was magnetic and he was delusional.

What the hell was this. He didn’t do things like this.

Like what. What was he going to do, ask a med student out, a girl who had no idea who he was? 

Was that so implausible. He could stay anonymous. They were both out-of-towners. 

But where would that lead. 

He knew where he wanted it to lead and he hated himself for it.

His mind raced all over her. 

He felt dazed. 

As if the centre of his gravity had moved to the heart of her. 

Another curious glace over and he felt his stomach drop.

She was hunched over a book in the break between customers, engrossed in it when her eyes weren’t flitting over to him. 

He’d recognise that turquoise cover anywhere.

His own name emblazoned on the front. 

Relief washed over him when he saw the familiar face of his mentor at the door, calling him on. 

“There you are. This place is charming! It’s time, let’s go,” Naveen said with a chuckle. 

Ethan quickly scrawled a word on a napkin and left it in the centre of the table.

As he walked out, he failed to avoid taking one last look at her. 

Her captivating eyes locked onto his with a final smile and he could’ve sworn she looked almost…disappointed. 

He hurried on to the convention centre, tucking the badge into the back of his drawer when he arrived back at Edenbrook, not quite ready to forget that small encounter. 

  
Ethan shook himself back from the memory. The harsh lights of his apartment were blinding.

Her eyes remained imprinted into his mind. 

He was always thinking five steps ahead. He mistrusted his past so much that he never thought about it, always living in the future. 

He was forever running, from Providence, Louise, all of it. But maybe focusing on the future had meant he’d missed out on a crucial part of the present. 

Eve. 

He picked up his phone and started texting. Almost as if she expected him, she responded fast:

_Humour me with something, Eve._

**_Always._ **

_Do you have an aunt who owns a coffee shop in Manhattan? In Hudson Yards._

**_Whoa._ **

**_I know you’re the world’s best diagnostician but how did you guess that?_ **

_I thought as much._

**_Seriously, how?_ **

_I’m coming over._

  
**1.00am**

“What was the emergency Dr Ramsey?”

Her voice was teasing as she opened the door to her apartment.

“I had to see you.”

“Is that so?”

She moved into the corridor, closer to him, the jasmine of her perfume washing over him as her fingers slid under his shirt and along his collarbone.

“Eve. This isn’t…I’m not here for that.”

He moaned softly at the touch of her hands tracing his chest before continuing.

“Earlier, when you asked if we’re still going to see each other. I’m aware that this isn’t quite defined. We’ve never spoken about us.” 

Faint concern swept over her brow.

“We’ve hardly had time Ethan.” 

“I know, but we should. Tomorrow night. Come out with me.”

The last words came out as a desperate whisper.

A radiant glow washed over Eve. 

“Are you asking me out on a date? Like an actual date?”

“Yes.”

“I’d love to.”

She pressed her lips over his tenderly and he cupped the back of her head drawing her in closer. When they broke apart, he turned to leave. 

“Where are you going?” she was still holding his hand. 

“We should do this properly from now on. You deserve nothing less. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She nodded, a joyful smile lighting up her face.

“Wait, Ethan. How did you know about my aunt’s coffee shop? You said you’d dig up dirt on me, but that’s some quick work.”

“Oh.”

He pulled the conference pass from his pocket and glanced down at his younger face looking up at him. 

“I gave a keynote at a conference in New York years ago. It was right next to your aunt’s shop.”

A blush crept up his neck and with a decisive exhale, he looked up to meet her eyes. 

The same curious eyes. 

“I think we might have met then. You won’t remember, you were working there on a visit and you asked me what you should specialise in.”

He saw it immediately. Her face flashed with vulnerability and she stared away from him, down the corridor. 

She remembered it so clearly. The curious stranger, who she’d pegged for an attending straightaway from his arrogance. How she’d worn him down triumphantly. How he couldn’t stop looking at her. How she wished he’d come over and talk to her again.

He promised to tell her what her speciality was but he had left without another word. But when she went to clear his table she found a word written on a napkin.

A word that was seared through her mind to this day:

Diagnostics.

She turned back to Ethan, meeting his concerned gaze.

“You left the note?”

He nodded softly. 

“All that time ago? It was you,” her voice was distant, the vulnerability breathtaking.

She reached up and flung her hands around his neck, drawing him into a deep passionate kiss. He responded immediately, wrapping his arms around her and drawing her body flush against his own. 

She grabbed his jacket and pulled him into her apartment but jumped when he resisted.

His eyes were alight with longing. 

“I want us to do this right Eve.”

He felt a delicate whisper by his ear.

“Everything about you is right for me.”

Like magic, he felt his whole body relax with her words.

Every moment he ever shared with her pounded through him like a second heartbeat. 

With a final sultry flutter of her lashes, she led him into her apartment.

He took in a breath and his chest swelled. 

He felt his past self, the man who’d met her for the first time, collide into his present, the man who was about to the spend the night with her.

And he felt a glimmer of someone else.

The man who could spend the rest of his life with her.

His future self. 


End file.
